Correspondent Christof Putzel travels to southern Italy to investigate how Europe’s growing appetite for cocaine is funding the growth of West African crime syndicates.
The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organization, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy. It finances itself through drug trafficking, extortion, protection and racketeering and its activities have led to high levels of murder in the areas in which it operates. It is the oldest criminal organization in Italy.[citation needed]
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In recent years, various Camorra clans have been forming alliances with Nigerian drug gangs and the Albanian Mafia, even going so far as to intermarry. For instance, Augusto La Torre, the former La Torre clan boss who became a pentito, is married to an Albanian woman. It should also be noted that the first foreign pentito, a Tunisian, admitted to being involved with the feared Casalesi clan of Casal di Principe. The first town that the Camorra gave over to be completely governed by a foreign clan was Castel Volturno, which was given to the Rapaces, clans from Lagos and Benin City in Nigeria. This allowed them to traffic cocaine and prostitutes before sending them across the whole of Europe.[12]
Homeopaths, anti-vaccination loonies and other advocates of “alternative” and more “natural” forms of medicine, or prayer, which are not confirmed through empirical testing and systematic observation, are ultimately enemies of science, reason and evidence.
Learn more about them here, and protect yourself and your loved ones from their corrosive peddling of facile nonsense. It may seem harmless, but when it becomes a substitute for real medicine, it can turn deadly.
If you do believe in the power of homeopathic medicine and wouldn’t mind making some money, which I’m sure could come in handy in this downward spiral economy, you could always decide to enter James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge: prove, under controlled conditions, that homeopathy (or any other kind of supernatural phenomenon) works. Horizon decided to take the challenge…
In the final part of this series, Owen Bennett-Jones examines the Islamic leader who confronted the might of the British Empire. The Mahdi was a devout man, who developed a huge following. This programme examines his rise to power and his clash with the British General, Charles Gordon.
The frontline between Christendom and the Islamic world has shifted for over a millennium, and at several key moments has erupted into war.
To the list of combatants from the past - Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Mahdi and Gordon of Khartoum - we now have to add George Bush and Osama bin Laden.
The Crescent and the Cross, explores several turning points in the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
In the final part of this series, Owen Bennett-Jones examines the Islamic leader who confronted the might of the British Empire.
The guided one
The siege of Khartoum was a rare moment of defeat for imperial Britain. And the conflict had a religious edge. The two sides were led by very devout men: General Charles Gordon and Mohammed Ahmed, a boat builder’s son who declared himself to be the Mahdi, or guided one.
The British government had in fact sent General Gordon to Khartoum to evacuate some Egyptian troops who were garrisoned in the city. But he did not want to leave without inflicting a defeat on the Mahdi.
The Mahdi though had recruited followers who admired his devotion to his faith. “When he felt hungry he would go the river and throw in the hook without putting a bait on it,” says his great-great-granddaughter Dr Mariam Sadiq al Mahdi. The young man thought bait was an unfair trick which cheated the fish. “If he gets a fish, that is what Allah brought to him. If not, that is his fate.”
From those pious beginnings the Mahdi built a mass movement with remarkable speed. “He was very charismatic,” said Dr Ali Saleh Karah of Sudan’s National Record Office, “and he appealed to a number of Sudanese people because he claimed to be a descendant of the prophet.”
The Record Office houses a collection of documents relating to the Mahdi. His fatwas in particular give a clear indication of the kind of Islam he believed in.
Anti imperialist father of the nation
Today many Sudanese revere the Mahdi as an anti imperialist father of the nation. But some modern historians are not convinced. “I think this is entirely historical,” says Justin Willis of Durham University. “I think the Mahdi himself had very little idea of a Sudanese nation and certainly would have had no idea that he would be seen as the father of it in years to come. I think probably it’s equally misleading to see him in some way as leader of a crusade against Christian invaders. The Mahdi was from his own point of view quite clearly interested in the revival of Islam and his struggle was against corrupt Muslim rulers.”
The Mahdi may have wanted to wage war on fellow Muslims but before doing so he had to win control of Khartoum. And with Gordon determined to hold the city, a clash became inevitable. After months of siege in which Gordon and his men were reduced to eating their horses, the Mahdi’s men broke through the city’s defences.
Gordon himself was beheaded - although historians on both sides now believe this was probably not under the Mahdi’s orders. “Both Gordon and Mahdi respected one another as human beings,” says one of Sudan’s most respected historians, Dr Yusuf Fadl Hassan. “The Mahdi thought highly of Gordon as a good Christian, compared with some of the Muslims whom he thought did not follow the teaching of Islam.”
If the Mahdi respected Gordon, the British press lionised him as a Christian hero whose devotion to duty knew no bounds. The Daily News, for example, wrote that “General Gordon will be remembered always in our history as the noblest type of warrior.”
That assessment overlooked the fact that had he obeyed orders, Gordon would never have tried to hold on to Khartoum in the first place. But he did and having been humiliated, London had to respond. The Mahdi himself died in 1885, but in 1896, an expedition was sent to avenge Gordon’s death and the Mahdi’s forces were defeated at Omdurman.
Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah (otherwise known as The Mahdi or Muhammad Ahmed Al MahdiArabic:محمد أحمد المهدي) (1844-08-12 – 1885-06-22) was a religious leader in Sudan who proclaimed himself the Mahdi (the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will appear at the end of times) in 1881, and declared a jihad against Egyptian authority in Sudan. He raised an army and led a successful religious war to topple the Egyptian occupation of Sudan.
Under his religious authority the divided clans of the Baggara and their rulers the Fur tribesmen were united into an alliance dedicated to establishing an “Islamic” state as the first step in a universal Islamic state.
In the West, due to the film Khartoum and other historical accounts, he is known for leading a siege against the city to drive the Egyptians and the British from Khartoum or to slaughter them. When Ahmad’s armies overran the city, they beheaded British general Charles George Gordon, in the fall of Khartoum. Ahmad himself died soon after.
Without his leadership his movement and state lost much of its momentum. Attempts to expand by invading neighbors were unsuccessful, and famine, disease, persecution and warfare killed off about half Sudan’s population.[1] In 1898 an invading British army destroyed the Mahdi’s army at the battle of Omdurman.
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Mahdi and jihad declarations
In 1881 Muhammad Ahmed declared himself Mahdi and ruler so as to prepare the way for the second coming of the Prophet Isa (Jesus),. “After consulting the ulama”, Egyptian authorities “attempted to arrest him for spreading false doctrine.” A military expedition was sent to reassert the government’s authority on Aba Island, but the government’s forces were ambushed and nearly annihilated by the Mahdi’s followers.[citation needed] Muhammad Ahmed retaliated by declaring jihad.
I am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels [3]
Unlike other Muslim reformers, the Mahdi did not advocate the application of ijtihad but “claimed to receive direct inspiration from God”, so that his own proclamations superseded traditional jurisprudence. This, however, did not usurp the prophet Muhammad’s position as seal of the Prophets, because the Prophet was — in some way — the intermediary of his revelations.
Information came from the Apostle of God that the angel of inspiration is with me from God to direct me and He has appointed him. So from this prophetic information I learnt that that with which God inspires me by means of the angel of inspiration, the Apostle of God would do, were he present.[4]
Given their general lack of interest in the area, the British decided to abandon the Sudan in December 1883, holding only several northern towns and Red Sea ports, such as Khartoum, Kassala, Sannar, and Sawakin. The evacuation of Egyptian troops and officials and other foreigners from Sudan was assigned to General Gordon, who had been reappointed governor general with orders to return to Khartoum and organize a withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons there.
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Modifications of Sharia
With Sudan now in Sudanese hands, the Mahdi formed a government. The Mahdiyya (Mahdist regime) modified the Shariah, (Islamic law) which would be implemented by Islamic courts headed by various Islamic imams, in accordance with the view of an Islamic state. The courts enforced a Sharia law that the Mahdi claimed was founded on instructions conveyed to him by God in visions.
According to this doctrine loyalty to him was essential to true belief. The recitation of the shahada was modified to include and Muhammad Ahmad is the Mahdi of God and the representative of His Prophet. Among the five pillars, service in the “jihād” replaced the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) as a duty incumbent on the faithful (though Jihad-warfare is central to orthodox Islam, it is not considered one of the five pillars of faith).
He also authorized the burning of lists of pedigrees and books of law and theology because of their association with the old regime and because he believed that they accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity.
In Programme Three of the series we look at the bloody siege of Malta of 1565.
In 1565 the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Mediterranean Island of Malta. Having once been in Arab hands, Malta was run by a group of devout militant Christians who became known to the world as the Knights of Malta.
The Knights were by no means strong enough to pose a serious challenge to the Ottomans but they repeatedly irked Suleiman by attacking his ships as they moved between the Ottoman capital in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) and his North African possessions.
At its height the Ottoman Empire controlled vast territories on three continents from the Topkapi Palace, a complex of opulent buildings on the banks of the Bosphorus.
“It was the centre of the world,” says Ahmet Kohash Professor of Contemporary History in Istanbul. “The empire stretched from the Danube to the Indian Ocean, and from the Caucuses to the confines of Algeria.”
Many Muslims today look back at the Ottoman Empire with great pride. But for some it is also a source of embarrassment. By today’s standards some Ottoman rulers had distinctly liberal lifestyles enjoying wine, women and song. There was even space within the Topkapi Palace to accommodate hundreds of concubines. To this day official guides are reluctant to discuss the emperors’ lifestyle for fear of upsetting contemporary Muslim sensibilities…
… The perceived moral decline that the Knights underwent over the course of this period is best highlighted by the decision of many Knights to serve in foreign navies and become “the mercenary sea-dogs of the 14th to 17th centuries”, with the French navy proving the most popular destination.[16] This decision went against what the Knights stood for most, in that by serving for a European power they faced the very real possibility that they would be fighting against another Christian force, as in the few Franco-Spanish naval skirmishes that occurred in this period.[17] The biggest paradox when studying this is the fact that for many years the French remained on amicable terms with the Ottoman Empire, the Knights’ biggest foe and proported sole purpose of existence, signing many trade agreements and agreeing an informal (and ultimately ineffective) cease-fire between the two states during this period.[18] That the Knights associated themselves with the allies of their sworn enemies shows their moral ambivalence and the new commercial driven nature of the Mediterranean. Serving in a foreign navy, in particular the French, gave the Knights the chance to serve the church and for many their King, to increase their chances of promotion in either their adopted navy or in Malta, to receive far better pay, to stave their boredom with frequent cruises, to embark on the highly preferable short cruises over the long caravans favoured by the Maltese, and if the Knight desired, to indulge in some of the pleasures of a traditional debauched seaport.[19] This decision shows the Knights’ growing lack of allegiance both to their Order and to their religion. In return the French gained a quickly assembled and experienced navy to show stability to their subjects and stave off the threat of the Spanish. The shift in attitudes of the Knights over this period is ably outlined by Paul Lacroix who states:
“Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them almost sovereign powers … the order at last became so demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, and gave itself up for the love of gain and thirst for pleasure. Its covetousness and pride soon became boundless. The Knights pretended that they were above the reach of crowned heads: they seized and pillaged without concern of the property of both infidels and Christians”[20].
With the Knights’ exploits growing in fame and wealth, the European states became more complacent about the Order, and more unwilling to grant money to an institution that was perceived to be earning a healthy sum on the high seas. Thus a vicious cycle occurred, increasing the raids and reducing the grants received from the European nation states to such an extent that the balance of payments on the island had become dependent on conquest.[21] The European powers lost interest in the Knights as they focused their intentions inland during the Thirty Years War. In February 1641 a letter was sent from an unknown dignitary in Valletta to the Knights’ most trustworthy ally and benefactor, Louis XIV of France, stating the Order’s troubles:
“Italy provides us with nothing much; Bohemia and Germany hardly anything, and England and the Netherlands for a long time now nothing at all. We only have something to keep us going, Sire, in your own Kingdom and in Spain.”[22]
It is important to note that the Maltese authorities would neglect to mention the fact that they were making a substantial profit policing the seas. The authorities on Malta immediately recognised the importance of corsairing to their economy and sent about encouraging it, as despite vows of poverty the Knights were granted the ability to keep a portion of the ‘spoglio’, which was the prize money and cargo gained from a captured ship, along with the ability to fit out their own galleys with their new wealth.[23] A slave market in Valletta that rivalled the Barbary Corsairs was established.
The great controversy that surrounded the Knights’ ‘corso’ was their insistence on their policy of ‘vista’. This enabled the Order to stop and board all shipping suspected of carrying Turkish goods and confiscate the cargo to be re-sold at Valletta, along with the ship’s crew who were by far the most valuable commodity on the ship. Naturally many nations claimed to be victims of the Knights’ over-eagerness to stop and confiscate any goods remotely connected to the Turks.[24] In an effort to regulate the growing problem, the authorities in Malta established a judicial court, the Consiglio del Mer, where captains who felt wronged could plead their case, often successfully. The practice of issuing privateering licenses and thus state-endorsement, which had been in existence for a number of years, was tightly regulated as the island attempted to haul in the unscrupulous Knights and appease the European powers and limited benefactors. Yet these were not all successful as the Consiglio del Mer contains numerous accounts from 1700 of complaints of Maltese piracy in the region. Ultimately, the rampant over-indulgence of the Mediterranean was to be Knights’ downfall in this particular chapter of their existence as they turned from military outpost to another albeit limited nation state in a commercially-orientated continent soon to be overtaken by the trading nations of the North Sea, themselves adept at piracy.[25]
Contributor Janet Choi goes inside a California state prison to investigate contraband smuggled inside the cells, and how cellphones are the new security threat.
20091210 at 16:25 
